Category Archives: Family

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Go Climb A Tree!

Posted in children, Family, Homeschooling, Kids, parenting, Unschooling by

Climbing a tree….one of the passages into childhood….

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No longer allowed at schools…..sad!

I really want to rant and rave about the need for tree climbing in our children’s lives. How the element of danger is necessary in the developmental process and how we as a society have removed nearly all degrees of danger (& nature) from our children’s natural play.

No climbing, you’ll get hurt
No jumping, you’ll get hurt
No running, you’ll get hurt

When my son was a toddler and we were heavily involved with a moms group. The other mothers would see him toddle off and start climbing. They would inform me, as if I’m not watching my own child. “He’s going to fall!!!” they would announce it in a panicked voice.

Not only was I watching my son, I had already assessed the situation and realize that if he did fall he might get a little scared, but he wouldn’t be injured. And it was a good opportunity for him to learn his abilities. My replies were generally on the lines of “if he does fall he will only do it once” or “if he does fall, he will learn from it”

One of the other mothers said to me during group, I can’t believe your busy son has never been to the emergency room when my sweet docile daughter has been three times already.

I just had to laugh at the descriptive personalities. Busy, sweet, docile…ha ha! Parents can be so bias at times towards their own sweet innocent darling perfect children. Especially when they hang out with busy dirty dangerous children whose parents clearly don’t know that germs and danger exist. Ha ha! (Oops my sarcastic side just slipped out)

The truth is her sweet docile daughter never had the chance to experience danger. She never had any “safe danger” to play with. She had no idea that life could be dangerous. It must be a safe situation, no one was hollering “stop you’ll get hurt!” So when opportunities came up and no one was looking (aka hovering) she would go about her normal developmental path and voila danger would arise, but she had no clue danger was there.

We as a society are so preoccupied with making the world a safer place for our children (which sounds nice) we are not realizing the consequences.

1) We are raising children that never get to experiment with “safe danger” Children today are not learning and making brain connections on their danger boundaries. (Which can also go into personal space boundaries and many other body awareness/social issues, but we can save that for another post down the road)

2) We are not outside in nature enough climbing, jumping, running, etc…Our children are becoming oblivious to outside sounds as well as sounds of danger and their intuition skills.

3) We are creating “overly worried” children. Worried about irrational fears, because they are told constantly don’t do this, don’t do that, this is dangerous, that is dangerous, don’t touch that, it’s dirty, it has germs, but they aren’t fully sure what they are supposed to do, or what real danger is, they only know its out there lurking in every corner, waiting to get them and it must be something bad….really really bad!

Now that I am involved in a homeschooling group, instead of the hover mama club, I see lots of tree climbing, free happy kids developing not only physical abilities but loads of brain power.

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So I plead with you, get out into nature and let your kids climb trees!

The Benefits of Relaxed Homeschooling Year Round

Posted in children, Deschooling, Family, Homeschooling, Kids, parenting, School-at-home, Unschooling by

First off I should let you know we are considered “relaxed schoolers” And we relax-learn year-round for many reasons, some of the main reasons are:

1) I noticed my children (back when we attended school) defined learning as something you can only do at a desk with dictation by a teacher. You simply could not learn in any other situation. In fact they protested anything they deemed as school-ish outside of school hours. The class room situation quickly killed their lovely spirit and curiosity to learn, which broke my heart and frustrated our whole family. The children were stressed and their behavior reflected their stress.

By relax schooling my children have reconnected with the freedom to choose WHAT they want to learn, WHEN they want to learn it, WHERE they want to learn it and HOW they want to learn it. Which has translated into a constant stream of learning. They no longer protest the process of learning. Life is once again a peaceful learning experience, year round.

The process of “de-schooling” took my children a few months, but we didn’t see complete fruits of our labors until we as a family found trust in ourselves, our abilities and overall our family groove.

2) Before school I was a “strewing” type mama. Which is an unschooling term. And I stopped that when the kids were in school. I assumed they were getting their education at school. I assumed very wrong. Once we pulled out, I started strewing again. And once again our entire lives became educational; therefore, we homeschool year round, whether we want to or not. ha ha!

Everything we do has a degree of learning to it.

Example:

An average morning could look like this…sleepy heads surfacing, wanting to snuggle and listen to an audio book.

The audio story may lead my son to research the status of Pluto as a planet or not. He will talk non-stop about it, research it, make crafts of it, etc for a few days afterwards. Or become a detective like the main character in the story and start a sleuthing club.

My daughter might want to watch a cartoon DVD. I agree to let her watch, as long as the language of the DVD was switched to french. She will build a fort on the sofa and start talking to her stuffed animals in french.

It is still early in the morning, they are still in their PJs and nibbling on their breakfast….their minds are engaged in something interesting to them. The wheels are turning and I haven’t opened one text-book yet.

3) year round schooling allows you to take time off as needed.

I follow a few curriculums, because it makes record keeping for the state that much easier. I only follow curriculums my children enjoy.

I will give a giant shout out to the math program “LIFE OF FRED” my son will literally BEG me to do more and more chapters. My daughter is not a fan of math, but she is a fan of snuggling up with mom on the sofa to hear a story about math and the life of the crazy little character Fred.
http://www.stanleyschmidt.com/FredGauss/11catofbooks.html

If we sit down to do some text-book type schooling, and it isn’t going smoothly, If it is causing frustration for me or the kids, we can simply take that day off and come back to it at a later time.

Our state requires 175-180 days of school, depending on the year. By homeschooling year round, I don’t have to really worry about taking a day off or even a week off now and then. There is no way we will have 185 bad days each year and if we do, then something drastically needs to change! In fact we normally hit our 100th day of school at least a month before the public school hits theirs.

Other reasons we might take a day off are less stressful reasons…maybe friends or family come to visit. A spontaneous trip to Legoland. It is simply a beautiful day out and the beach or a hike sounds more appealing. It snows on our mountains and we want to make a snowman or go sledding. There are plenty of fabulous reasons to ditch the text books and head outside for a great learning experience.

Some families enjoy having a hard start and stop to their school year, but that does not work for our family. We see learning as something fun and a natural part of life that doesn’t stop in the summer or on the weekends.

My children do have some friends that attend school and can’t understand why my children love schooling year round. It does not compute with the kids that attend school, because they live for the summer break….to make that less confusing we simply call July our summer if people ask.

As I typed out this blog, my son was explaining this balancing experiment to his sister. (He learned all about this experiment from the tv show Beakman’s world. I am not anti-TV, but I am a firm believer that TV options for kids NEED to have an educational element. TV needs to spark curiosity that extends into their real life.)

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And now that I’m about to hit publish on my post my son comes up to me and says “excuse me mom, but do you think you could give me some homework?” I ask “like what kind of homework?” He says “oh I don’t know maybe like go research our solar system or something?” I send him off with a post-it note that says “research and write down five facts about our solar system” he runs off with a giant smile….a moment later he asks if I can take him to the library today…so there you have it, we will be going to the library today. 🙂

That is what homeschooling in our house looks like! That is what learning should look like IMHO and that is why we have a relaxed homeschooling style and why we do it year round.

Reality Check for New Moms – Scrapbooking

Posted in children, Family, Kids, parenting by

I keep getting “Creative Memories” sale notifications. This has brought to my attention the massive amounts of scrapbooking materials I purchased right before I had my first child. I was ready to make amazing perfect creative memories. Or open a scrapbooking store, lol.

I took my first child to have his photos taken professionally every month on the day of his birth, so my scrap-book would be perfect, he’s 1 month old, 2 months old, 3 months old, and so on…I did this for at least the first two years of his life…when baby number two arrive I continue each month, but quickly dropped the professional aspect and only really had time to pluck out cute shots from my obsessive ‘camera in baby’s face constantly’ collection.

This obsessive photo documentation must give you some insight to my determination towards making these creative memories. I am the youngest of five and the only documentation I have of myself as a baby is the card from the hospital nursery identifying me.

Truth be known alllll of those amazing scrapbooking tools went untouched.

All I had time for was sticking each months photos into an old fashion paper scrapbook and jotting some notes down on the sides of each photo stating what he or she was doing developmentally or some comical tid bit that happened. Spelling wasnt perfect, handwriting was messy, even have some scratched out words, etc but the intention was to pluck from this book and make a beautiful perfect creative memory out of it when I had time. Ahhh good intentions….haha!

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I was flipping thru this book the other day and realizing this is THE BEST CREATIVE MEMORY EVER!!! I love this book. I love to flip thru the pages, read the notes, see the photos, look back on those fun, crazy, TIRED days and know from the scratched out and quickly jotted notes just how it really was, perfect in our own special way. I love having this hard copy because I recently lost digital photos that were not backed up in time.

I highly recommend new moms to toss aside the notion of perfect.

Your definition of perfect will quickly be changing. You will endure spit up, poop explosions, inconvenient lactation issues, exhaustion, bad hair days, bad mood days, messy house, the biggest laundry piles you’ve ever seen, etc… Simply try to enjoy your child(ren) during that chaotic time, document it the best you can without causing yourself additional insanity. When things get less crazy and you look back, you will be so glad you have this silly scratched out not perfect memory book of the kids.

The Unsocialized Homeschooler

Posted in children, Family, Homeschooling, Kids, parenting, Unschooling by

The socialization of homeschooled children is a common topic that many homeschoolers are asked about by non-homeschoolers.

When people are considering homeschooling, often they fear their child will miss out on the socialization a classroom brings.

When people are unaware of what exactly goes on in a homeschooling home, they assume the children are unsocialized or rarely get to play with children their own age.

People assume homeschooled children only socialize with their siblings as playmates.

Socialization seems to be one of the biggest concern of the non- homeschooling community.

As a homeschooler, socialization is my least concern, and I’d like to share with you why.

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Each week on average we have 3 play dates with a variety of friends.

Each week we meet up with a homeschooling group and have a park or beach day.

The homeschooling group arranges monthly field trips.

We have sleep overs, camp outs, BBQs, parties, community activities, etc.

We sign up for clubs, sports, dance, horse riding, music, etc.

I was recently told by a friend whose children attend the local public school, that my children have more of a social life than hers do. She confessed, she had worried about homeschooling kids, thinking they sat at home all day with nothing to do, while the other kids were at school playing with friends.

The truth is, school kids spend majority of their day sitting in the classroom, not outside playing with friends. Where as homeschooled children are generally finished with their studies hours before school kids are let out for the day; therefore, homeschool kids get to spend the rest of their day truly SOCIALIZING with friends.

If you are concerned or would like more information on the topic of socializing homeschooled children, here are two really good books on the topic.

Kreative Kids!

Posted in Family, Homeschooling by

I love that my kids think “outside of the box”!!!

Yes there are times (like when my son’s creativity blew out our internet!) that can be frustrating, but over all I wouldn’t trade my outside of the box thinkers for anything!

Teaching themselves how to skateboard. After a few scary attempts down our driveway, they decided they might try to hone their skills on the trampoline. According to the kids, the falls are less bloody.

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I love that they are working on problem solving skills and physics on their own…gives me  a reference for later science lessons, a reference they can relate to. 🙂

It’s no surprise “Speed and Velocity” by “They Might Be Giants” happens to be a favored song in this house, as is any science experiment that involves speed and velocity!

Thomas Edison Jr.

Posted in Family by

I am forced to remind myself it could be worse….Thomas Edison’s mother homeschooled him and he burnt down their barn with his experimental adventures.

Today I wrote a horrendous post, long and dull…I hit publish instead of save draft and then my Internet service crashed. I couldn’t delete it! Ugh! I had to go about my day with that post out there for all to see and I couldn’t fix it, rewrite it, delete it, nothing!

After a LONG conversation with the phone company I have an appointment for next Monday to have a tech come to the house and fix the situation…nearly a week of no Internet and that horrendous post is out there.

Tonight, my husband calls me into our son’s room with a tone like I’m two and in trouble for something. But then when I get into the room I see what he’s wanting to share.

Our son has rigged up his own “cell phone” (think I mentioned he’s been wanting to do this) he purchased an old school phone at the thrift shop for fifty cents. Used his handy dandy wiring skills and a spare phone jack in his room to create his “cell phone” He actually had a working phone in his room, but in the process disrupted our Internet service.

I’m lucky I have a handy dandy smart hubby who can fix nearly anything. We are back online again and my horrendous post has been removed with only ONE view! (Best slow visitor day ever!)

I’m tempted to keep the phone company appointment as it is their fault my son has this new sparked interest. Maybe they can come out and teach him how to make his dreams come true without electrocuting himself or blowing out our Internet!

Where Did I Come From Mommie?

Posted in Family by

Kids are curious. Lets start with that. They have questions. Lots and lots of questions. Sometimes those questions catch you off guard. Well before that time came (learning from friends that had gone before me) I prepared!

I bought a pop up children’s book that explains where children come from. I was going to be ready. No catching this mama off guard! I’m ready bring it on!

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Dr. Ruth was at my side. Who could explain it better right? I flipped thru the pop up book and it seemed pretty darn good.

As my children toddled on, there were a few times I thought the book was ready come out. But turned out they wanted to know more about where baby chickens came from…Dr. Ruth didn’t cover that.

Finally the day came. Sex Ed was about to take place. I get out the book and cuddle up on the sofa to read this amazing story of love and life and as I’m reading aloud I hear my words as if from a bubble. The words came out of my mouth so fast, too fast for me to stop them, but at the same moment the words came out in such slow motion I felt like I was in a time warp.

“The penis goes into the vagina”

Oh my holy moly mama me…..did that seriously just come out of my mouth, did my curious child pick up on it? What questions will come now? Do i need to make it clear that my daughter and son are NOT to give this a try? Do i mention some RULE like you need to be married first? oh my mind is racing with allllll the what ifs you can imagine and them some! As I stumble thru the rest of the book trying to pre-read before another one of those graphic details flies out of my mouth. I realize the worst is over, what more can Dr. Ruth have me say now. THE PENIS GOES INTO THE VAGINA….there is no more to tell. That was my brave motherhood moment and if I could do it over I’m not sure how I would have handled that one minor detail of just HOW DOES the sperm get to the egg mommie?

So I thank Dr. Ruth for leading me in this tricky path, but I have words of wisdom for those of you that haven’t approached this place in parenthood yet.

ALWAYS read the book you plan to teach with IN FULL, so there are no surprises.

Think of all the crazy questions your child might come up with once they are fueled with this new found info and be prepared to inform them that under no circumstances are they to attempt this with a sibling, friend, etc.

OH that brings me to parenting manual RULE #2

Make it very clear to your child their privates are PRIVATE! They should not be exploring them with siblings, friends and for sure never ever ever an adult! And make it clear, if anyone is interested in exploring their privates they MUST tell you! Keep your children safe. They can’t go running around this world in the dark, but once they have this info, they need to know the boundaries and they need to be VERY CLEAR boundaries!

So in the long run, I am very glad Dr. Ruth was there for me and in such a clear matter of fact way, but I wish I would have been prepared for that one sentence before I heard it coming out of my mouth in such graphic detail! I do recommend the book if you are at the this place with your children.

And I will say now that my children know it ALL, they don’t seem remotely interested in it. So it might be an easy way to just get it over with and no longer wonder when that awkward moment might come. Just read the story book and move on to their next question…in my house it was: “Mom, can I wire this old phone to these jumper cables and then wire them to this circuit board bit and put it in the plug jack and make my own cell phone?”

Is there a book on that? Dr. Ruth’s guide to child engineers that want to electrocute themselves at each turn?

Quick thought on our stressful busy lives

Posted in Family, Healthy Living by

It’s our own fault.

Told you it was quick. Ha ha!

But seriously, Think about it….give it some really good long hard thinking!

WHO signs the kids up for all these activities?

WHO agrees to pick up this or drop off that here and there?

WHO commits, volunteers, over schedules, etc?

Take back your life.

CONSIDER what you are agreeing to before you agree.

(this is where I thought I was done….but get ready this is where it no longer is a quick thought, now I’m thinking out loud and eeks, blogging might be my mental thoughts in type…aka not so private diary!) ha ha!

I recall a time long ago, a friend laughed at me because she noticed in my date book I had a chunk of time blocked off each day that said “RELAX” … I still schedule down time. It’s important! For your soul, your health, your mind, your body, your family, your friends, your kids, your dog, your cat, hamster, bag boy at the market! The world is a better place when you have a little down time!

Think about the kids, they say they are bored, but some of the greatest creations grow out of boredom. Give your kids (and yourself) the chance to do nothing!

That reminds me: I love these two books and HIGHLY suggest them if you have a busy life. And if you can’t slow down enough to read them, you can get one of them on audio which is very handy, a set of ear buds and you’re on your way!

I have actually read both of these several times and I read the children’s book to my kids all the time! They love it because it reminds them of all the things they can do when they have NOTHING TO DO!

Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids by Kim John Payne Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids by Kim John Payne
Nothing to Do by Douglas Wood Nothing to Do by Douglas Wood

I ran that ragged race and lost. Everyone who runs it ends up loosing, just depends how long you want to run.

Our lives are at a much slower pace now. (Thanks to HOMESCHOOLING, it’s the best thing we’ve ever done for our family!) And I’m in shock that people don’t think they can slow down. They think it’s not possible. They are WRONG. You can slow down as much as you’d like, it’s entirely up to you.

Our once go go go family, now carves out “quiet time” each day (at least 4 days of the week) where the kids spend an hour in their rooms reading or playing quietly by themselves. And get this….(drum roll please) the kids ASK FOR IT if it’s been a couple of days without it!

We also have two days of the week (sometimes 3 or 4) that we schedule NOTHING. It’s these days I casually get house chores accomplished (or not) kids play and create new games while complaining of boredom, we can stop in the middle of laundry and play a game, read a book together, bake, etc…whatever comes up. And it’s these days my kids love. They remember these days. These are the special times that are missed when you spend 24/7 running here and there and loosing that rat race. What will your kids remember about you? (the back of your head while driving in the car? Your frazzled expressions as you race here and there?)

It’s up to you to make the changes and slow down your world. (for you and for your kiddos)

Own it…it is YOUR fault. Change it…if you want to!

I challenge you to one 24 hour period of scheduling nothing! Doing nothing! And enjoying it!  I’d really like to challenge you to a week, but didn’t want to push it…ha ha!

Alternative Parenting haha!

Posted in Family by

I planned to start this blog with some sort of brilliant post that exploded with finesse, grace and style, but instead I find myself laughing at my cockamamie ideas and must share on this funny morning.

Each morning I wake up early (I’m not a morning person, in fact I would be content to stay in my cozy bed alllllll day long) to meditate and have a little “me time” before the chaos of motherhood begins. We all need to carve out that “me time” so we can be givers to those in our world that need us.

Anyhow, my kids have been creeping their bedtime later and later, which is fine most of the time, but they are creeping to 11:00pm and this is getting too late because it affects their ability to wake up before noon!

So I have this brilliant idea, today I will blast music thru the house, I’ll start with clam meditation music and hopefully wake them gently. If that doesn’t work I’ll move to a bit louder but not too abrupt of music options. I am not a fan of waking up my children before their bodies are ready for it. Kids need their rest and waking up naturally is one of the many many benefits homeschooling brings our family.

Well I’ve been blasting music for 45 minutes without a stir. LOL. I opened all the curtains, sun shinning in, still nothing. I found an old skool country station and Dolly Parton is belting out some “Rocky Top” song, still nothing, not a single movement from my kiddos! Switched it up to Old Skool RAP! Still Nothing! I can’t stop laughing at all the mornings we’ve tippy toed around the house in fear we’d wake our light sleepers! Ha ha!

I’m wondering when did my precious angels go from waking at the squeak of a mouse to snoozing thru blasting honky-tonk & rap music? LOL I guess we all can change over time, even my ever so light sleepers. Sort of feeling bad about all the mornings I (less than patiently) schooled my husband in HOW TO OPEN A DOOR WITHOUT MAKING NOISE! (why is it men can’t do this?)

Here is the best part of this chaotic plan!  (actually not wise planning on mom’s part, but there’s never a better time then NOW…right? LOL) We have a lunch date with my father in law today. Did I mention proper manners are important to him? Did I mention my kids are normally CRABBY when they are woken up! Did I mention I am CRABBY when I have crabby kids. Who’s idea was this? You will find I ask myself this often. I have hope there is someone else at the root of our chaos! Yet, I also have faith our angels are watching over us and it’s going to all be AOK in the end.

So it is 7:00am my children are finally awake. I started this adventure at 6:00am. It took one hour of me blasting music (worried I might blow out our speakers!) opening all curtains to let the sun shine in and periodically rubbing their backs and saying sweet things like wake up honey, the day is waiting for you to play, I love you, wake up sweetie, sleepy head it’s time to get up, etc…NOTHING, not a stir, groan, protest, etc…NADA…had I not felt slight breathing I might of suspected the worst.

……oops, 7:05am and my daughter has crawled back into bed….

…7:25am kids are awake, one is dressed, one is not, both are eating breakfast…both are SO FAR in a good mood….

….only time will tell if this “alter the kid’s bedtime” plan was a good one…we must get thru this day (particularly lunch with my father in law) and at bedtime we will see if they hit the sack around 8:00pm. Fingers crossed!

Wishing you a peaceful day! (remember to breathe deep throughout your day)

UPDATE: lunch and day went well…kids were in bed by 8:25pm…not bad for day one of bedtime boot camp!